Glorifying Terrorism

Analysis / Interpretation / Press

A Jewish advocacy group called on Swiss President Alain Berset to ban an exhibition celebrating hate and terror against Israel and the Jewish diasporan scheduled to open on Friday in Geneva.

The exhibition on “Palestinian Resistance” is due to take place until July 8, at the Cercle du Mail of the Workers’s Party in the Swiss city. It will feature posters by Marc Rudin, a Swiss-born artist who died last April. Rudin, aka Jihad Mansour, was deeply linked since the 1970s to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), listed as a terrorist organization by the European Union, the United Kingdom and the US.

Rudin was sentenced to 8 years jail in Denmark for a bank robbery, intended to fund the PFLP. Over the following years, from Lebanon and Syria, he supported the PFLP by producing posters and militant magazine covers, campaigning for the Intifada, inciting hatred against Israel and the Jews.

The exhibition features posters celebrating martyrdom and armed violence, depicting a “Palestine from the Jordan to the sea” (without Israel), inciting children and women to join the struggle, glorifying terrorism… decorated with keffiyehs, Palestinian flags and macabre symbols of death and murder, such as kalashnikovs, hand grenades, molotov bottles and bombs.

The organizer of the event is Samidoun, a Palestinian prisoners’ advocacy organization, outlawed in Israel as “a subsidiary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Among the planned speakers of the exhibit opening is the head of Samidoun, Mohammed Khatiba, who is himself a member of the PFLP.

Last month, the city of Geneva cancelled the event following a protest by the European Jewish Association.

In his letter to the President of the Swiss Confederation, Shimon Samuels, Director for international relations of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre,  wrote: “Mr. President, this event incites to violence and, as such, contravenes the law. We count on you to take immediate action. Otherwise, this glorification of terror could infect with hate against the Jews, first Geneva and Switzerland, but will then certainly spread across Europe.’’

Source:

https://ejpress.org/call-on-swiss-president-to-ban-posters-exhibition-glorifying-terrorism/